Life on the Margins: I Am Nasrine

Iranian-born filmmaker Tina Gharavi believes that film
is a democratic tool which can be used to counter the misrepresentation of
marginalised British identities. She spoke to Agnes Woolley about her feature, I
Am Nasrine

Still image from I am Nasrine

More often than not contemporary
fictions about forced migration to the UK end in the departure, deportation or
death of the refugee character. Asylum seekers, Okwe and Senay both leave
London at the end of Stephen Frears’ 2002 filmDirty, Pretty Things, the young protagonist of Chris Cleave’s The
Other Hand(2009)is deported
back to Nigeria and in Caryl Phillips’s novel A
Distant Shore(2004)a
refugee is badly beaten and left to drown in a canal. Tina Gharavi’s new film I Am
Nasrinerebalances this bleak picture through the story of Iranian
siblings who seek asylum in the UK after a series of run ins with the Tehran
police. Though her brother, Ali, is killed in a fight, Nasrine flourishes in
her radically changed circumstances and ultimately decides to make a life in
the UK.

Although this is her first
feature, Gharavi’s film work is diverse and innovative; including
collaborations with community groups through the charitable arm of her arts
organisation, Bridge +
Tunnel Productions (which she established in 1998), video installations and
cross-platform storytelling (I Am Nasrine
has an accompanying Interactive
Web Narrative ). I ask Gharavi what it is about film that makes it such an
ideal storytelling medium: ‘Film is a really important part of democracy’, she
says, ‘cinema is not an elite art form and is a crucial part of the
conversation about who we are and the stories we tell ourselves.’ Independent
films such as I Am Nasrine are an
important part of that conversation and provide an alternative to the limited
narratives of mainstream popular cinema.

Gharavi is keen to highlight
positive stories of migration and integration. The film exhibition, The
Last of the Dictionary Men(first exhibited in 2008), presents the
recorded stories of a group of first-generation Yemeni seamen who settled in
South Shields over sixty years ago and comprise one of the oldest Middle
Eastern communities in Britain. Characteristically hybrid, the exhibition draws
important historical links between recent and past migration to the UK,
connections which are often forgotten in the contemporary panic over EU
accession states and asylum. After all, as Gharavi notes, Britain is an island
and has always been a place of encounter for people on the move.

Nasrine’s decision to stay in the
UK even after her brother has been killed testifies to a vision of Britain as
hospitable to migration. Is this an image Gharavi shares? ‘It’s important not
be essentialist about it; it’s neither all good nor all bad.’ On the one hand,
she says, ‘there are still serious issues with racism and abuse’, but on the
other the country has embraced British Asian identities which are now ‘a
legitimate part of the landscape partly as a result of the country’s complex
colonial legacy.’ In fact, I Am Nasrine is
less interested in the hard-won legitimacy of established migrant communities,
and their fraught historical relationship to Britain, than in the fragmented
and transient lives of low-paid
migrant workers, asylum
seekers and travellers,
whose presence in the UK is often either shunned, ignored or deliberately hidden
from view.

One of the film’s strengths is
its interest in representing these marginalised groups on screen in ways that
counteract negative images in the press.
To this end, the film avoids what Gharavi describes as a stereotypically ‘grey
and miserablist’ view of Britain by shooting in warm colours and tones. Taking
in her new home, Nasrine’s lingering gaze documents the daily lives of a
diverse population: a row of residents basking in the sun outside their
red-brick terrace; a boy turning somersaults in the playground; brightly-lit
fairgrounds and sun-soaked beaches. Justifiably, then, Gharavi rejects the
comparisons people often draw between her and Ken Loach. Her films avoid the
‘brit-grit’ stereotype and resonate more strongly with recent work by female
documentary makers like Carol
Morely and Clio Barnard, both of
whom are interested in marginalised lives and the geographical settings in
which they unfold.

It was important to Gharavi to offer an alternative image of the
North East, an area she has lived in for over 16 years: ‘I was very interested
in the North East as a character because I think it has been very
misrepresented by people who want to show it as very grey, dark and
miserablist’. This is not a version of the region that Gharavi recognises from
her own experience, explaining that ‘Geordie people are amazingly open and
welcoming.’ When she first came to the UK in 2006, Gharavi taught in Ashington,
a small town which was once at the heart of the mining industry. Despite being
a small, localised community with a distinctive local dialect, Gharavi was
welcomed, ‘there was no sense of malice’, she says, ‘nobody questioned my right
to be there.’

Gharavi’s interest in the
diversity of British identities is evident in I Am Nasrine. Rather than channel its story of migration through
the protagonists’ battles with faceless institutions, the film focuses on the
panoply of everyday interactions between Britain’s varied inhabitants. In doing
so it provides a space for these more marginalised stories to be seen and
demonstrates her conviction that cinema plays a valuable role in a democratic
society.

For me, the most interesting
connections the film makes are those between the newly-arrived Nasrine and the
settled, but precariously-placed, traveller family with whom she becomes
friends. As Gharavi points out, both Nasrine and her classmate Nichole are
‘people whose status is questioned’. Perhaps drawn together by this shared
marginality, Nasrine and Nichole quickly become close and Nasrine finds comfort
in the warm and welcoming environment of the site where the family live.
Nasrine goes with the family to Appleby Horse Fair in Cumbria where her
presence offers an inclusive view of the UK by focusing on what connects,
rather than divides, its diverse inhabitants. In this way, the film is part of
a groundswell of alternative representations of travelling communities (see,
for example, the Romany Theatre
Company), which provide a much-needed antidote to the pervasive ‘gypsy
wedding’ phenomenon. In its depictions of the day-to-day encounters between
diverse groups – Ali works at a takeaway and a carwash, both rich settings for
convivial interactions – I Am Nasrine
is as much about the potential for connections
across cultural and social boundaries as it is about the antagonisms they
can engender.

By focusing on the value of these
everyday encounters – Ali’s short-lived affair with a British man and Nasrine’s
friendship with Nichole – I Am Nasrine provides
a redemptive portrait of contemporary Britain without shying away from the
hardships and conflicts that characterise seeking asylum. It’s a shame that the
stories of successful integration and meaningful encounters depicted in Last of the Dictionary Men and I Am Nasrine do not reach wider
audiences. While it’s important to confront the very real antagonisms migration
can produce, we should also celebrate those quieter, everyday connections
forged in the margins.

I Am Nasrine is screening at the Curzon Renoir on 9th February. Last
of the Dictionary Men is now showing at
the Mosaic Rooms, Qattan Foundation.

About the author

Agnes Woolley is Lecturer in Contemporary Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the author of Contemporary Asylum Narratives: Representing Refugees in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and has published extensively on postcolonial literature, theatre and film, with a focus on migration, diaspora and climate change. She is also a trustee at Streatham Drop-In Centre for Asylum Seekers and Refugees.

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